Marc Chagall’s Works Set New Record

Marc Chagall’s Works Set New Record

New Auction Highs for Marc Chagall Paintings

Two of Marc Chagall’s paintings sold for over the estimated price at November’s Sotheby’s Auction. Le Grand cirque, a ten-foot wide painting, that Chagall did in 1956, was sold to a bidder at Sotheby’s Asia for $16 million. The estimate price for Le Grand cirque was $15 million.

Marc Chagall Le Grand Cirque, 1956 Courtesy Sotheby’s

Setting another record, was Les Amoureux, a painting of Chagall and his first wife and muse, Bella Rosenfeld. Chagall and Bella met in their home town of Vitebsk in 1909, married in 1915 and had one daughter, Ida, in 1916.

Bella was the subject of many of Chagall’s paintings. In 1941, with the help of MoMA’s director, Albert Barr, Chagall and Bella, and their daughter, managed to escape from France before the Nazi occupation. In 1944, Bella died, in New York, of a viral infection.

Les Amoureux was painted, and sold, in 1928, and has been with the same family for the last nine decades. Les Amoureux sold to a Russian bidder for $28.5 million, becoming the top lot of the auction and the highest price paid for a Chagall work.

The Value of Marc Chagall Prints

In 1950, Chagall began to produce lithographs at Mourlot Studios, a commercial print shop in Paris, founded in 1852 by the Mourlot family. Artists like Matisse and Picasso had their works printed at Mourlot Studios. Chagall collaborated with master printer printer Charles Sorlier for 35 years, until Chagall died in 1985 at the age of 97.

Chagall called himself, “a dreamer who never woke up,” a statement reflected in the dreamlike quality of his work. The high quality of Chagall’s lithographs capture, not just the ethereal nature of his works, but also their painterly quality.

The prices realized for Chagall’s prints have increased with time. Like all fine art prints, their value depends on quality, edition limit and demand. Because Chagall was a prolific artist, who worked for more than seventy years of his life and whose work spoke to a global audience, much of his work was copied and sold, so fine art collectors and dealers must know how to identify and buy fine art prints.